John 6, verse 40. This is my
text this evening. And this is the will of Him that
sent me. But there is a clear fact established. Established in this Bible from
Genesis to Revelation. It's established on every page. It's established in every book.
It's established by every witness and every prophet. God sent his
son into the world. God sent his son into this world. The scripture says he was in
the world. He was in this world. The world
was made by him, and the world knew him not, but he was in this
world. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God, and all things were made by Him, and
without Him was not anything made that was made, and the Word
was made flesh, and dwelt in this world." He said, "...the
Son of Man is come to this world to seek and to save the lost."
The Apostle Paul says, "...the Son of God is come into this
world to save sinners, of whom I am chief." In the fullness
of time, God sent His Son into this world. And this is the will
of Him that sent me. God sent His Son. When John the
Baptist was down there by the River Jordan, and this man, Jesus
of Nazareth, came to be baptized of Him. John did baptize Jesus
Christ, and when they came up out of the water, the Scripture
says the heavens opened, and the Spirit of God descended in
the form of a dove. upon the shoulders of Christ,
I suppose. And then the voice of the Father
spake from heaven and said these words, This is my son. This is my son. This one born
of Mary, this one born in Bethlehem, this one laid in a manger, this
one visited by wise men. This one raised in a carpenter's
shop, this one hated, rejected, despised of men, this one who
is the friend of sinners, whose disciples were fishermen and
shepherds, this is my son in whom I'm well pleased. And when
our Lord Jesus Christ took three of his disciples to the top of
the Mount of Transfiguration, again the heavens opened. The
Scripture tells us that Moses appeared there on that mountain
with him, and Elijah appeared there on that mountain with him.
And then the Father spoke again, and He said, This is my Son.
I don't know whether it dawned on most of you or not, upon me
either, for that matter, but God came into this world. God
visited this world. I don't know whether we take
that as seriously as we ought to take it. One of our men said
tonight, back in the study, and it's made me think a great deal,
we don't know how thankful we ought to be. We have the Bible. We have all of this precious
literature that comes down these songs we were singing a moment
ago by these great men of God of two, three hundred years ago.
There are countries where they don't have these songs, they
don't have this literature, they don't have this book. And we
take it for granted, these blessings of God. We just open it and look
at it and read it like we'd read a comic book or something. Oh, if this were all taken away
from us and we didn't have God's Word and you found just a little
page lying on the ground somewhere and picked it up and there's
the Bible, you'd read it and study it and clutch it to you
and cling to it as some valuable transcript. And I don't know
whether it's dawned on us the seriousness of this thing. God
said, this is my son. He said there's a man owned a
vineyard, and he sent some servants down to talk to the people who
were keeping the vineyard, and they mistreated the servants.
And he sent some more servants down there, and they mistreated
those servants. He said, well, I'll send my son. Surely they'll
honor my son. I'll send my heir, I'll send
my own son down there to talk to these men." And when he sent
the son, they mistreated him too, and they hanged him to a
tree. And the keeper of the, the owner
of the vineyard said, they can't get away with that. And he went
down there and destroyed the vineyard and all these men. Now
God sent some servants down here to this world. He sent Abraham
and Moses and David and Daniel and Jeremiah and Jeremiah and
Elijah and a few other fellows, you know, and they were mistreated
and despised and rejected. Nobody paid any attention to
them. Jeremiah cried a river of water. He said, Oh, that my
eyes were rivers that I might weep for the daughters of Zion. And then God sent his son. He
came down here and he visited this world. And they treated
him shamefully, and they rejected him, and they nailed him to a
cross, they crucified him and slew him. How seriously have you taken
this matter? This is my son. This is my son. Now, you can
be indifferent and careless about a whole lot of things if you
want to, but I'm calling your attention to the fact Jesus Christ,
the Son of God. You can be nonchalant and indifferent
about a lot of things if you want to. You can care not whether
a Democrat or a Republican is elected president. You can care
not whether the Senate votes for one thing or the Supreme
Court condemns something else. You can care not whether this
world is at war or at peace, but you better care who Jesus
Christ is. Now, that better make some difference
to you. That better make some difference. It's a serious matter.
And this is the will of Him that sent me. He sent me into this
world. I came into this world because
my Father sent me. He had sent servants before.
He had sent servants and messengers before, and the people threw
them out. Now He sent His Son, and this is the last messenger.
There's not going to be any more. This is the Son. And this is
the will of Him that sent me, that everyone that seeth the
Son and believeth on him, he's going to have everlasting life.
And when the time comes to raise the dead, he's not going to be
raised with the unbelievers and the wicked, he's going to be
raised with the just. When the time comes to depart
from the grave and to live ever eternally somewhere, this man's
going to be raised with the just in the first resurrection. over
which death hath no power." Now, I've drawn some pretty serious
conclusions from the fact that Jesus Christ came into this world
and died on the cross. The first conclusion is this.
If God sent his Son—now, Son's a pretty precious article, a
pretty precious article. And an only Son is an even more
precious article. And an only begotten, well-beloved
Son of God is an even more precious article. And if God sent his
Son into this world to save you and me, then I draw this conclusion,
we must be lost. We must be in pretty bad shape. Would this sacrifice, this extreme
gift, be given for nothing? Wouldn't you say that if you
were God that this would be sort of a last resort? Wouldn't you
say if you were God that you would try every method in this
universe to save lost sinners without committing your son to
the shame and agony and humiliation of a cross? Wouldn't you say
you'd give that a try? I'm sure that this sacrifice,
this supreme, this extreme sacrifice was made only because there was
no other way. No other way to save my soul. and the death of the Son of God.
The second conclusion I draw from this, if Jesus Christ came
to save sinners, if God sent his Son, there must be no other
way of salvation. There must be no other way. If
you'll come with me to a garden outside Jerusalem called the
Garden of Gethsemane, I want you to listen to something tonight
I feel like saying, take off our shoes, this is holy ground. It's night time, and there are
twelve men walking into that garden. One of them is a mysterious
person, one of them is different from the rest, one of them seems
to stand out from the rest of them. They're all following him,
they're listening to him, and he's saying to them, let not
your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also
in me. In my Father's house are many mansions, if it were not
so, I would have told you. I'm going to prepare a place
for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come again
and receive you unto myself. I'm the vine, you're the branches.
Without me, you can do nothing. I'm the bread of life, I'm the
water of life. You look to me. Marvel not, my
brethren, if the world hates you. They hated me long before
they hated you. They'll despise you and hate
you and persecute you and do all manner of evil against you
falsely for my sake. But rejoice and be exceedingly
glad, great is your reward in heaven." And in a moment he stops
and he tells eight of them to stay there. And he takes three
of them, Peter, James, and John, and goes a little further into
that dark garden. And then in a moment he tells
the three to stop. And he says, now Peter, James,
and John, you wait here, you tarry here, and you watch, I'll
be back. And he goes on alone, and he
falls down on his face, his knees, beside a rock or a tree, and
then he lifts his eyes to the Father, and as he wrestles, and
this is real conflict, this is real agony, As he wrestles with
our guilt and our shame and our sin, he says, My father, if it
is possible, let this cup pass from me. This is no farce, this
is no dress rehearsal, this is no game, this is real agony,
real conflict. The Son of God engaged in conflict
with evil and sin. The will of the Father is that
he should die for our guilt and our sin, but the very nature
of Christ rebels against that awful dark cave filled with the
lizards and snakes and bats and spiders of human depravity. But he must walk through it,
and he must take all the venom and poison of all the human race
poured out upon him, separating him from his Father. And he says,
Father, if it's possible, if it's possible, Let this cup pass."
But it wasn't possible. Christ had to suffer. Christ
had to die. Christ had to agonize. And if
Jesus Christ came to bear that shame and agony, there must not
be any other way of salvation. Come to the Garden of Gethsemane
and watch the agony of the Son of God, and then preach your
water baptism for salvation. I'd like to listen to it in the
light of that conflict. Come to the cross of Calvary
where the precious blood of the Son of God shed for the cleansing
of guilt and sin. Come to Calvary and then present
your Ten Commandments and say that salvation is in the keeping
of these." I'd like to hear you preach that sermon in the light,
in the contrast of that awful agony on Calvary. There is no
other way. There is no other Savior. There
is no other salvation. And then, if Christ came to save
sinners, If God sent his only begotten Son into this world
to save sinners, then salvation must be of great importance.
Our Master says it is. Turn to Luke 14. I want you to
listen to what he says here in Luke 14, beginning with verse
26. Listen to this. If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and
mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters. Yea,
in his own life also he cannot be my disciple." What's he saying?
He's saying that salvation is second to no one and to nothing,
not even your life. To no one. That your relationship
with Christ is more important than your relationship with father,
mother, wife, children, brethren, and sisters. That your relationship
with Christ is more important than your very own life. Because
actually, without Christ, you don't have any life. And whosoever does not bear his
cross, whatever it is, the cross, somebody said years ago, is a
symbol of death. And whosoever is not willing
to bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. That's how important it is. If
the Son of the living God himself is engaged to redeem my soul,
then the redemption of my soul must be more important than anything
that I might attempt to do, or anything to which I might dedicate
my life, or anything to which I might engage my attention.
My salvation, the salvation of my soul, is of the most importance
because of who worked it out, the Son of God. And then the fourth thing, if
Christ came to save my soul, or to save me, and if Jesus Christ
visited this world for the purpose of redeeming people, then wise
is the man who spends his life studying him who came. Now there are men in this world
who study the life of Lincoln. And that's a profitable pastime
because he was an exceptional man. He was a great man. But
we give our time to studying his life, his sayings, his writings,
his habits. Whenever I see something about
Lincoln, I turn and read it with great interest because I admire
him. They're men who've given their lives to study the writings
of various poets and men of literature, men of history. explorers, great
generals, Napoleon, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, other
men. They've admired these men and
they've given time to study these men, what they had to say and
what they had to do. I say wise is the man who spends his life
studying Jesus Christ. It'd be more profitable, and
I'm not discounting this other now. Please take it in the light
in which it's given. I'm not discounting it. I'm saying
it's a profitable pastime. But wise is the man who finds
out everything he can about the Son of God. That was God's Son
that came into this world. That was God's Son who was born
over there 2,000 years ago. That was God's Son who died on
that cross and rose again. That's God's Son about which
all this is written? Shame on us. We know more about
Christopher Columbus than we do about the Son of God. Shame on us. We know more about
our current president than we know about the Son of God. We
spend more time reading about the haggling of these men up
yonder who really don't know what they want or what anybody
else wants than we read about the Son of God who knows what
we ought to have. The man who found out all he
can about Christ. I ran into a gentleman last week. How refreshing it was. Oh, how
refreshing. It was one of the high points
of my life. There was a man, I'll tell you his name. His name
is Bubba Key, K-E-Y. Out in Houston. When he was a
teenager, oh, there wasn't one like him in Houston. There just
wasn't one like him in Houston. He was terrible, just terrible. He and his buddy John Woods were
public enemies number one and two. That's a fact. I'm not exaggerating. They were dope addicts. They
were the strongest peddlers and pushers of dope in the whole
Houston area. And Bubba was arrested and tried
and sent to prison when he was 21 years old. And he was so wowed
that they took him down in solitary confinement. He described it
to me. He said it was just a hole. Just a hole. And the way he described
it, not much bigger than this end of the platform. And he said
there was just a hole in the middle of the hole. That was
all that was there for him to use as a bathroom. There was
a button on the wall to take the water through it, you know.
That's all. It was a stone floor and a stone wall. He got bread
and water every day and a good meal every three days. He said
they were trying to punish him and to break him. And oh, how
wicked he was. And then he met the Lord. And
he really met the Lord. It wasn't just religion that
he got. He met Christ, the Redeemer of sinners. He met the Savior
of lost men. He met the one that can lift
a fellow out of a hole, out of a pit, out of a miry clay, and
dwell in his heart. and establishes faith, and establishes
confidence and his assurance, he met Jesus Christ. He knows
the Son of God. Oh, how he loves Christ Jesus. He led the singing for me in
that meeting out there last week. You talk about a good time. That
old boy would get up and announce the number with the tears rolling
down his eyes. He knew what he was talking about,
the love of God, how rich, how pure, how measureless, how strong,
it shall forevermore endure the saints and angels song. He said,
I know what that's all about. I know what that's all about.
He'd get up there and sing, how great thou art, and man, you
could just, you could feel the Spirit of God moving in his heart,
in his life, because he found out how great God was, what the
law couldn't do, God did do. What they couldn't do in a hole,
in solitary confinement, they couldn't break the spirit of
old Bubba Key, they couldn't bring Bubba to his knees, they
couldn't get Bubba off his dope, but Jesus Christ did, just like
that. What they couldn't do in three
years of prison and punishment and penalty, God did in a moment. Made him new. And you know what
Bubba's doing now? He's leading the singing out
there in that church and teaching songs to those children out there.
And one day his wife was having a garage sale for they're trying
to raise a little money to pay off the debt at the school down
there. And this woman came in to buy something at the garage
sale, and she had this little old boy with her. He was about
five years old, I think, and his hair was down to his shoulders
here, and he wouldn't look up. He'd look down at the ground,
Bubba said, all the time, just never saw a child like him. And
he'd look down at the ground, that old hair, that old stringy,
dirty hair hanging down. He had dirty clothes on, and
this woman said, I wish I could, she's talking to Miss Key, find
a home for this boy. It's from friends, boy. His mother
was a prostitute, and the kid was just being raised in a gutter,
and he was mean and contemptible and dirty. And Bubba said, we'll
take him. And he took that little guy in
his home, and he gave him a burr haircut and a good bath and a
whole lot of love. and put him in that Christian
school out there, and the principal told me that the teacher, Miss
Jackson, she goes to the church there, and that little fella
liked to, he liked to put her in retirement. She'd come in,
Brother Shanks told me she'd come in every day for the first
two weeks crying in his office. I can't take it another day.
I can't break that voice. I can't. He's going to ruin the
school. He's going to ruin me. He's going to ruin everybody.
Mr. Shanks, help me. Pray for me." And he said, Ms.
Jackson, go back and try again. Love him for Christ's sake. Bubba
loves him. You love him too. And brethren,
let me tell you something. When I went out there the first... I'll tell you the end of that
story. When I went out there on Tuesday morning, got up in
front of that school, Moreland's here right now, 325 students.
I looked down where Brad's sitting right here on the second row,
and there sat a little old bright-eyed boy with a grin on his face from
ear to ear, singing louder than any of them, the songs of Christ. And it was that little old boy.
I didn't know the story behind him. I went to the pastor. I
said, Pastor, who's that little fellow down there? Who is that
little boy? I said, He caught my eye. And
then he told me that story. He said, Brother May and that
little boy like to wreck this school. But he said, love, love. He calls Bubba daddy. Oh, he
loves Bubba. Bubba hasn't adopted him yet.
He told him he's going to when he got 18 years old. He's going
to let him choose if he wants to be Bubba's son. Bubba said,
I'll let him be my son. They got another little girl.
They just got her not long ago, a little old blonde. And she
is a doll, but Bubba's doing what God did for him. God came
down in solitary confinement in a rat hole and picked old
Bubba up and washed him and loved him and saved him and gave him
a home and a family and grace. And now Bubba's doing the same
thing for some of God's precious ones. He's going out there and
picking them up out of the dunghill, out of the gutter, and he's loving
them for Jesus' sake. Brethren, this is real. This
salvation is real. When God comes in a man's heart
to dwell, as He came down to this earth, God's Son came to
this earth. Now, salvation must be pretty
important, mustn't it? I must be engaged in a pretty
important work, and you must be engaged in supporting a pretty
important enterprise. God sent His Son to head it. God sent His Son to head it. And salvation is the greatest
thing in the world. And He's the only Savior, and
He's the only one that can do for you and me. what he did for
old Bubba Key. I tell you, sometime I want him
to come here. I'll bring him here to a conference and get
him to sing for you. He's a big guy. He's got white hair, gray
hair. He's a little younger than I
am, but oh, the grace of God, so rich and so free in that man's
life. He that seeth the sun and believeth
on him hath everlasting life. Let's turn in our hymn books,
and let's sing a closing hymn. I believe we'll turn to number
119. What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs
to bear. What a privilege to carry everything
to God in prayer. Maybe, let me say this, maybe
somebody, God spoke to you this morning, maybe you were thinking
in your heart when you came to the service tonight, if Brother
Mahan gives somebody an opportunity to publicly confess Christ tonight
like he did this morning, I'm going to do it. I'm going to
confess my Lord. I'm going to stand before the
church and say, He's my Lord and He's my Savior. I'm giving
my life to seeking the Lord and to serving the Lord. Would you
like to do that? Well, let's stand and sing 119,
and you come ahead. Every day is a new beginning.
Every day is coming again. you.